Bat Masterson and Amos Burke

Actor Gene Barry passed away earlier this month at the age of 90. His geek cred comes mostly from his role as Dr. Clayton Forrester in the 1953 movie version of The War of the Worlds. But he also starred in a couple of classic TV shows--in each case playing a sophisticated, intelligent protagonist quite capable of either out-fighting or out-thinking his opponents. It was the sort of role that Barry really excelled at and, in both shows, his performance was combined with strong scripts to produce that rarest of things--sincerely entertaining television.


From 1958 to 1961, he starred as Bat Masterson, giving us a completely fictional but nonetheless really cool version of the real-life gunfighter.


From 1963 to 1966, he starred in Burke's Law as Amos Burke, a homicide detective who also happened to be a millionaire. He works solving crimes pretty much because he just loves doing it. For two seasons, it was successful as a well-constructed whodunit with an interesting and unusual lead character. Unfortunately, the last season was marred by an ill-considered attempt to cash in on the James Bond films by making Amos Burke an international spy. It turns out that millionaires need to stick to solving crimes, not sneaking out of Rumania with stolen microfilm hidden in their hollowed-out heels.


I took note in this THIS POST of a Bat Masterson episode that shared a plot device with an Uncle Scrooge story.


In this episode of Bat, see if you can spot the slight similarity between a plan concocted by Bat to foil some river pirates AND a plan concoted by a certain Hobbit to help some friends escape from prison.

Ducks, gunfighters and ships in strange places

What do Bat Masterson and Scrooge McDuck have in common?


Well, both of them stumbled across the wrecks of old Spanish ships in the desert of the American southwest, well away from any water.


For Scrooge, it happened in the story “The Seven Cities of Cibola,” published in Uncle Scrooge #7 (1954). Scrooge, Donald and the nephews are looking for the titular lost cities, which were reputed to be filled with gold.


Along the way, they run across the ship, which had been sailing along the Colorado River in 1539 before being displaced into the desert by an earthquake. Artist/writer Carl Barks does his usual perfect job of making the sequence visually striking.

Bat Masterson, on the other hand, ran across a wrecked Spanish ship in the desert in THIS EPISODE (broadcast July 15, 1959)

of the classic television series starring Gene Barry. Gee whiz, there’s an awful lot of wrecked Spanish ships littering the American desert.


One can’t help but wonder if someone on the Bat Masterson writing or production staff was a fan of Disney comics and perhaps lifted the “ship in the desert” idea for the TV show. Or perhaps both stories were simply drawing on the same Old West tall tales.


Whether that’s the case or not, it’s tempting to assume that they might be the same ship, thus allowing us to place Uncle Scrooge and Gene Barry’s fictionalized version of Masterson in the same universe.


But, sadly, the two ships don’t quite match up. The ship Masterson finds contains treasure—a chest of jewels and gold nuggets. Whereas the ship Scrooge and the nephews find doesn’t contain any treasure—though it does provide them with an important clue to find the lost cities.


I guess fiction writers owe quite a debt to the Spanish conquistadors. Greed; war; betrayal; courage and cowardice; quests for lost cities of gold (which never existed in real life, but often turn out to be quite “real” in various fictional universes)—all this has provided storytellers with an unending supply of fodder for entertaining adventure yarns.